Rubénerd!

My first reaction when I saw this Hatsune Miku figure in 2011 was "jeepers, you'd get a twisted back doing that!" Today, I feel like an idol who's spun too far, though there's nothing virtual about MY neck!

"A curved spine is The Devil's roller coaster!"

As a young, healthy, immortal person who's only health issue is recurrent family headaches every few weeks, when I do get sick or have pains hit me from out of nowhere, I take the opportunity to complain about it whenever and however I can.

Since this morning, the back of my neck towards my spine has been in such horrid pain it's indescribable. I've had neck pain before, often when I've slept in an awkward position or that time I fixed a computer tower under a desk rather than bothering to lift it up and work on it where there was plenty of light and space.

This pain is different through. It's as though someone has a drill and is boring a hole into the top of my spine. As long as I sit perfectly still with perfect posture (the latter is probably a good thing to do anyway) the pain is dulled, but the instant I turn my head or eat or sneeze, I'm suddenly a drunk sailor.

My mum's cancer treatment often left her immobile for many days, and as a result I'd help her perform exercises to release tension in her joints and muscles. A common one we did for her neck was to have her stand in the corner of the room with her arms on each wall, and leaning as far forward as she could before the pain set in. Years later, I found myself doing the same thing this morning. I could feel (and, gulp, hear) things happening with my body, and afterwards the pain was slightly more tolerable.

Not the French bread kind

I'll be heading to the GP first thing in the morning to see what I should do. I've never done this before, will I get a referral for a physiotherapist? And while I'm on the subject, what's a physiotherapist?

If anything, this is a wake up call. I'm not a teenager any more, and can't afford to take things like my posture and ergonomics for granted. I liked to think I do the right things for my back and neck, but there are probably many more things I could be doing.

Thank you for letting me whinge ^_^;

This is something different to what I usually discuss here, but I thought it was worth a mention.

For over 12 years my mum underwent courses of chemotherapy and radiation treatment for her malignant cancer in Brisbane, Australia; Singapore; and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

During that time we were with several different insurance companies and health funds, nearly all of which went out of their way to make our lives miserable, confusing and difficult with their road blocks and legal challenges either to the medications themselves or the the ways they were being administered. Ironic considering how insurance companies come down like a ton of bricks on people like you and me if we're late with a premium payment.

Anyway I've noticed people tend to share more negative experiences than positive ones, so since this weblog started I've endeavoured to help tip the balance. When a company treats me right, I like to tell people.

Of all the insurance companies we dealt with, the one that stood out for us was Bupa International who we were with for the duration of her treatment in Singapore.

From their Wikipedia page:

Bupa is a large British healthcare organisation [...] a private company limited by guarantee; it has no shareholders, and any profits (after tax) are reinvested in the business.

At times they questioned the medication my mum was being prescribed, but upon receiving an explanation from my mum's acting oncologist they were nearly always prompt with payments. By insurance company standards, you can appreciate how unusual that is.

More importantly however was they displayed a level of flexibility that other insurance companies didn't, particularly with more unconventional treatments that others either blanketly refused or threw up so many legal challenges that often we'd have to pay tens of thousands out of our pockets and would only be refunded months after the fact. Suffice to say, my mum had exhausted so many treatments in the first eight years that she was on experimental treatments for the last few. The point is, they accommodated when others rarely did.

This of course is an entirely anecdotal post. It should be read as-is without warranties or guarantees. Nothing I wrote should be taken as legal or financial advice. You would be foolish at best and criminally negligent at worst to purchase a service as vital to yourself and your family as health insurance based on what some jabroni babbles on about on his weblog. I absolve myself of all liability, and by reading any of this post you agree to this. You get the idea.

What I can say is Bupa International were the only company we dealt with that treated my mum with respect and took one of the scary variables out of her treatment.

I bring all this up because I'm currently in legal wrangling with some other [areshat] insurance companies and felt compelled to highlight a mob that did a great job. And no, I was not paid for this post.

Like so many other people I could spend my time here conflating Steve's condition with the potential shallow short term business implications for Apple (though their recent blockbuster performance would indicate everything is better than fine!), but just sent this instead.

Dear Steve,

Even with a similar recent family experience with health, I won't pretend to relate with what you and your family are going through right now, particularly with a tasteless media circus chasing you.

Please don't let them get to you. Stay strong, and get better in your own time, for yourself and your family. *manhug*

Peace, health and happiness,
Ruben :)

Sent from my iPhone

What he's going though is damned scary. I'm sure that won't stop a few tasteless jackarses making comments like this though.

Creative Commons photo of Steve by Macinate on Flickr.

Discovery Health is running a story about 15 modern conveniences that are bad for our health. I have a 16th item to add to their list: paginated stories that are split up into 15 separate webpages!

Their list of list items in a list

Most of the list consists of fatty foodstuffs such as partially hydrogenated oils, margarine and fat. They also mention high fructose corn syrup, the primary reason why I don't buy any processed food or drink made in the US. Come to think of it I should be buying very little processed food at all, right?

Plastics, leaded fuel, microwaves and other such whatnot they're probably right on, but I was disappointed to see them rehash the same tired argument against the use of Teflon coating that has been so thoroughly debunked by so many people, perhaps none quite as beautfilly as this person or Bill Nye the Science Guy. I love Bill Nye the Science Guy, he's like an American version of Dr Karl who wears bow ties.

My revised list

Still, I'm no medical expert but I think I could have condensed their 15 points into one small bullet list:

• radiation emitting thingys [maybe]
• toxic and non bio-degradable stuff
• processed food

I suppose it's harder to come up with 15 pages of ads that way ;).

Had another one of those incapacitating headaches today. It would make a mockery of the ones my mum had to call it a migraine, but it was enough to knock me out for most of the day.

Panadol, a lie down, Tiger Balm and drawn curtains are the things I usually do, if you're reading this what headache remedies do you recommend?

With my chronic sleeping problems, I've decided to try cutting back on coffee and replace it with tea. Ritsu is SHOCKED! And Mugi is... hold on, I'm distracted again.

Much like a smoker who has oral fixation after quitting, I realised as much as I need the bean it's the experience of having a steaming hot beverage while I'm programming or doing other work that I miss when I'm not having coffee, so tea is a really good analog. Except I program computers which are digital.

I'm the only one in the family who likes it, but I love Earl Grey tea. I'd make Jean Luc Picard proud, and disappoint Janeway ;). English Breakfast, Chai and Green are my other favourites, depending on my mood and the time of day. While we were in Ireland I also became quite partial to Irish Breakfast, but the supermarkets here don't stock it.

Twinings is the staple around here (cue Bakemonogatari reference), but Dilmah makes a mean green tea. I had some Oxfam English Breakfast from Australia which made me feel all warm and fuzzy, but I'm not sure if they have shops here.

The backstory you don't care about

For those who aren't bored of the story already, back when I was in school my mum would often have chemotherapy early in the morning so we weren't in the oncology ward during the busy hours of the day. To the frustration of Ms Sameuls, my high school year coordinator who called me a "part time student" on several occasions behind my back, I would always go with her to the hospital to keep her company, even if it meant skipping morning classes or taking whole days off when she'd have to go to the ICU which occured more frequently as the years went by.

Because it was so early in the morning, we got into the habit of having me go upstars to Delifrance to buy takeaway coffee and "medicial cakey substances", to use her lingo. She was the most epically awesome person, so of course The God(s) had to take her out while keeping people like Bush alive. Karma is bunk.

Anyway getting back on track, I got into the habit of having one cup, then two, then three to stay awake in those early hours, and eventially it became a dependency. I was up to seven a day a few years ago (which ironically helped my abnormally low blood pressure!), but I've since cut back to four. It's my hope by drinking more tea to have that down to two or three a day. Here's hoping I can pull it off!

You know what would help?

If Mugi and Jean Luc Picard (or Mugi's seiyuu and Patrick Stewart!) came over to help me drink more tea. I'd ask Yui to serve it, but she'd probally spill it everywhere. Or Mikuru, that works :).

Usually I ignore email addressed to me that isn't relevant to me, but in this case I'm making an exception because it's for a good cause and becuase I'm in an awesome mood :).

G'day Ruben,

For all of you Australians in America is time to rally behind a good cause. My good friend Duncan Schieb is driving across America to raise funds for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and he needs our help. Whether you can say hi along the way, help him with a fund raising event if he is coming through your city or just make a donation yourself, then its time to stand up and help a fellow Australian help others.

We have got behind him and are offering a prize to those that get involved or donate, so here is some incentive. How about a trip for 2 to New York, 3 nights accommodation and coming into the VIP Suite at Yankee Stadium for the game on the 19th June between the Yankees and Mets!

Hopefully that is enough incentive for you to get up, dust off your wallets and make a small effort to make a big difference.

You can find out more about the trip and competition at Duncans Website at http://www.aussieacrossamerica.com but hurry, he has already started and left LA and moving across the middle towards New York. You can find a travel path on his website.

Come on, get involved and lets show them how much spirit we have in our
Australian blood.

Cheers

I sincerely mean no offence, but...

The internet is an incredible place to gather grassroots support for noteworthy and important causes such as Duncan Schieb's ride to support the American Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. I absolutely support Duncan 110% and if I were in America I would absolutely be doing my bit to support him.

That said, the internet also makes it much easier to tailor messages to individual recipients rather than mass mailing messages to people who may or may not be eligible for their contents. All good email marketing applications have this capability.

For example, if someone like me on their account profiles with a site states they're an anti-patriot, that they do not live in America, nor are they interested in sport, then it should be simple to modify emails to either include relevant passages, or to not send them to certain people at all. It's not just non-profits that don't do this, even organisations such as CNET which has a ton of public data to mine routinely sends out email that's irrelevant to many of their recipients, as I talked about in February.

I don't mean to come across as rude or that I don't care about good causes like this -- far from it. I feel as though if these techniques were used, grassroots efforts would garner more support. As a tiny example, imagine if in their email they had recognised where someone was living and had a specific PayPal donate link in the recipient's local currency.

In the meantime

Go to Duncan's site and support his worthy cause!

http://www.aussieacrossamerica.com/

I promise this will be my last iPad post, at least for a long time. In fact with this problem, it might not even be a self-imposed restriction :P.

From reading the reviews flooding in so far, the response has been almost universally positive. I think dante@sisna.com on the MacRumours forums put it the most eloquently:

You have to leave the desk with one -- sit on the sofa with it -- to really grasp how it will begin to change lifestyles.

So much more enjoyable than a laptop/netbook.

It just changes the whole experience. I am hooked.

Going to have a hard time producing client content today -- I want to CONSUME it.

The YouTube iPad interface is beautiful

I'll reserve my own judgement until I use one for myself, but if this is true it shows once for all technical specifications have little to no bearing on usability after all. Waah, the iPad doesn't have feature X and a netbook does! Yes, and what's your point?

Unfortunately my own worst fear about it has been confirmed. From the first post in the aformentioned MacRumors forum thread:

The screen is bright and crisp with wide viewing angles. Despite the oleophobic coating, it collects and shows fingerprints more than expected.

Well bother

Not only do I inherit my dad's inability to devise and deliver good jokes, I also suffer from constantly sweaty hands, the medical term is palmer hyperhidrosis. It's perhaps my biggest handicap as a software developer and blogger, if I don't have a keyboard cover and replace it every couple of months I destroy computer hardware. It also means I don't shake people's hands and I can't walk along holding hands with a girl, which makes me even more socially awkward and shy than I would otherwise be. Anyway, you get the idea :(.

Surprisingly, having a touch screen phone has been a godsend because a flat surface is much easier to wipe clean than a tiny, complicated keyboard, but given I'd be reading books on an iPad I worry having my greasy pawprints over the screen would get really irritating. A small iPhone screen (or a Nexus One screen, or a Palm Pre screen...) is easy to wipe clean, but would it scale to something as big as an iPad?

I suppose for now I'll have to keep using smaller sub-notebooks with keyboard covers, until Apple develops a super high tech self cleaning screen that's even better than what they currently have.

There's a joke about absorbency and the product's name, but that's below the tone and standards of this blog. Heh, iPad.

I know we're all bored to tears with American healthcare reform analysis, but someone against the bill tweeted me this afternoon with a message I think summaries the debate pretty damn well.

@Rubenerd: Question is do you think that people should have a right to that which they do not earn?

Do you think people "earned" cancer and subsequent medical-related bankruptcies? Do you think human dignity, love and compassion are financially negotiable?

Phrasing healthcare as something that has to be "earned" sure doesn't sound like freedom to me. What about the freedom to be with your loved ones? The freedom to live without pain and suffering? The freedom to not live in fear?

Then again I suppose I'm one of those "super evil socialists" the likes of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck warn you all about with blackboards and books they didn't write.

Pardon the French...

My family was damned fucking lucky to have excellent medical insurance to pay for my mum's 12 years of cancer treatment. If we couldn't afford it and we lived in the US, she would have died half of my lifetime ago, and I probably wouldn't remember her. That'd be okay though, because that means taxes are a bit lower.

If you'll excuse me, I've got a lump in my throat for some reason.

Congratulations to all my American friends!

I just finished watching Barack Obama's moving live speech about the passing of healthcare reform. It isn't everything we wanted, but the fact it was able to pass is nothing short of miraculous. History will judge this as not only the defining moment of the Obama administration, but the day when America started caring for her people as she promised to.

"For all those whose cares have been our concern,
the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives
and the dream shall never die."

~ Edward M. Kennedy, RIP